Ben Solo & Rey A Star Wars Story
by NOT Kid Morte
Summary: What if Ben took Rey's hand and stepped into the light? Basically how I think The Last Jedi should have gone.


Summary: Basically how I think The Last Jedi should have ended. What would have happened if Ben took Rey's hand and stepped into the light?

WARNING! Kind of contains spoilers I guess.

Everything between the marks ' ||| ' are part of 'The Last Jedi' novel I just used it because I honestly couldn't find any better way to write it than that. I give full credit to Jason Fry. Also I'm not that good at writing action moments yet.

A/N: I know I hate author notes at the start of stories so I'll just cut to the chase, this is my first Star Wars fic and depending on how you guys take it I'll complete the story before uploading another chapter unless I get enough reviews or whatnot. But definately tell me what you guys think.

||| The turbolift doors opened with a hiss and Kylo led Rey into the throne room, where the Supreme Leader of the First Order awaited them on his throne. His face-less, crimson-armored guards stood on either side of the throne, bladed wapons ready. Snoke himself was almost slouching; indolent in his golden robes, secure in the safety of his sanctum.

But his eyes were piercing and hungry. Rey tried to avoid them, but his gaze was like a lodestone, dragging her attention involuntarily to him. Their pull was akin to what she'd felt near the pit on Ahch-To-whispering of secrets that had been reserved for her, that belonged to her. Ancient, hidden knowledge that would destroy the weak but elevate the strong. The worthy.

Snoke grinned hungrily at her and she found she couldn't look away until the Supreme Leader fixed thos dreadful, bottomless eyes on Kylo instead.

"Well done, my good and faithful apprentice," he said, the voice deep and slow. "My faith in you is restored."

Then his gaze pinned her once again.

"Young Rey. Welcome."

Snoke waved and Rey's binders parted and clattered to the floor-a trivial demonsration of the Force. He noted approvingly that it no longer awed her.

"Come closer, child," he said.

She refused him and Snoke reached out with the Force, whose power had waxed even as his body had withered. To his delight he found Rey strong-even more powerful than he'd imagined. Strong with the Force, and with the kind of towering will that made her able to command it.

She would have made a fitting instrument for Snoke-if he'd still had need of such cruel tools.

"So much strength," Snoke said, savoring the currents of power in the room and the chaos of their collisions. "Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise."

Another seemingly offhand gesture and Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber ripped itself free of Kylo's grasp, tumbling past Rey to smake into Snoke's hand. He turned to the weapon gently, admiring both the skill of its construction and the power coiled within it. To Snoke's eyes,the weapon's very form revealed the Jedi lineage behind its creation, a string of one mighty names that no longer had any meaning.

"Skywalker, I assumed," he said. "Wrongfully."

He set the lightsaber down on the throne's armrest and pinned Rey with his gaze.

"Closer, I said."

She resisted him again, but this time Snoke didn't limit himself to testing ger defenses. He used the Force to compel her body, yanking her slowly across the floor, centimeter by unwilling centimeter.

Rey tried to resist, commanding her feet to remain planted on the floor, but it was hopeless-she was pulled closer and closer to the Supreme Leader. As on Takodana, with Kylo Ren, she found that both her mind and body had been invaded and overwhelmed. The feeling sickened her-her stomach wanted to revolt, as if Snoke were a physical malady it could purge.

"You underestimate Skywalker," she warned the gaunt, robed figure, her voice strained by trying to keep her distance. "And Ben Solo. And me. It will be your downfall."

"Snoke's eyes glittered with feral amusement. Few things were more entertaining thatn an opponent who mistook a small amount of knowledge for the entire picture. Their downfalls were so much more satisfying. Provided that before the end, the were confronted by the sheer scope of their mistake and failure.

He studied Rey, still futilely struggling against his will, and decided that he had time to teach her this final lesson.

"Oh?" Snoke asked, radiating mock concern. "Have you seen something? A weakness in my apprentice? Is that why you came?"

He laughed at the dawning horror on her face, and her attempt to hide it. There was nothing she could hide from him-not with her defenses so inadequate. Not ever her thoughts; her deepest fears and secrets were safe from him.

"Young fool," Snoke said. "It was I who bridged your minds. I stoked Ren's conflicted soul. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you, and you were not smart enough to resist the bait. All because you love him despite what he's done to you and your friends."

Kylo Ren had remained kneeling in teh throne room as Snoke tormented Rey, his face an impassive mask. Now he looked up in surprise, his eyes locked on his master.

Snoke ignored his apprentice's eyes-just as he ignored the sickly waves of pain and confusion that rolled out from him into the Force.

But he did not ignore the fear in Rey's face. Her shock at learning Snoke's role in forging her connection with Kylo had disrupted what meager defenses she had. With her concentration broken, Snoke dragged her to his throne, her face paralyzed just centimeters from his own.

Holding Rey pinned there, Snoke considered Kylo.

He had seen his apprentice's enormous potential when he was still a child, the latent power of the Skywalker's impossible to miss. And he had also seen how to exploit the boy's fellings of inadequacy and abandonment, and his mother's guilt and desperation to contain the darkness in her child.

And indeed, Ben Solo had performed the role Snoke had envisioned for him perfectly. The combination of his potential and the danger he posed ahd lured Skywalker into seeking to rebuild the Jedi. His power had then destroyed all Skywalker had built and sent the failed Jedi Master into exile, removing him from the board just as the game entered a critical phase.

But what role did the boy would play in the future was less clear. He called himself Kulo Ren, but as with so much else about him, that was more wish fulfillment than reality. He had never escaped being Ben Solo, or learned to resist the pull of the weak and pathetic light, or had the strength to excise the sentimental streak that had destroyed his legendary grandfather. And then there was his most glaring failure of all: his love for the girl.

Snoke had once seen Kylo as the perfect sudent, a creation of both light and dark with the strength of both aspects of the Force. But perhaps he'd been wrong about that. Perhaps Kylo was an unstable combination of those aspects' weaknesses, a flawed vessel that could never be filled.

Snoke pushed the thought away. There wold be time to consider Kylo's fate later, after the Resistance and the last Jedi had been destroyed.

And both goals were now at hand.

Snoke turned his attention back to Rey, still gamely struggling to fight somethings she had no hope of contending with, let alone defeating. It was a pity about the girl, whose unexpectedly strong powers intrigued him. But her role in the story was just about over. She had one final service to perform, after which she could be discarded.

"And now you will give me Skywalker," he told her. "Then I will kill you with the cruelest stroke."

He saw horror in her eyes, followed by defiance.

"No!" she managed.

"Yes!" Snoke replied, exultant. He raised his hand and hurled her across the room with the Force, then held her in the air as he smashed aside her restance and began rifling through her thoughts, memories, making them his to do with as he would. The skin at Rey's temples pulsed in waves, a physical manifestation of the violent intrusion into her mind.

"Give. Me. Everything. "Snoke commanded.

The very air between them bent and wavered as Snoke harnessed the Force and made it his weapon. Rey thrashed in pain, screaming and seeking an escape that didn't exist.

Kylo could feel Rey's pain and panic, a bright roar in the Force that overwhelmed all else, even the dark presence of Snoke. But he did not intervene despite how much he wished he could, instead he bowed his head and awaited his master's command.

Rey could feel snoke Snoke in her head, his consciousness a live, hungry thing, carelessly sifting and sorting through what wasn't his, what he had no right to.

The Supreme Leader must have taught Kylo this ability, she realized. But he was far more brutish than his apprentice. Rey was unable to puch back against him, his mere presence threatened to overwhelm her. Unlike Snoke, Kylo used finess to find what he wanted and unlike with Kylo, she had no sense of that mind being left open to her. Snoke's presence felt like a pit, empty and cold and dark, as if the dark-side cave beneath Ahch-To had gone on forevor.

Random bits of memory came back to her as Snoke scrutinized them and cast them aside. Here she was, alone at sunset on Jakku. Waking from a dream of a cool island in a gray sea. Stunned and reeling beneath Maz's castle. Holding a lightsaber hilt out in mute appeal.

She felt his interest quicken at that last moment burned into her mind. That was what he wanted: Skywalker's island, and the planet of which it was a part, and what it was called and how she had reached it.

Rey tried to blank her mind, to shut him out, to fight him off. None of it worked. Snoke found what he wanted, took it, and discarded her. She found herself on the floor of his throne room, writhing in pain, consumed by hatred for him. He just laughed at her.

"Well, well," he said, voice oozing satisfaction. "I did not expect Skywalker to be so wise. We will give him and the Jedi Order the death he longs for. After the rebels are gone we will go to his planet and obliterate the entire island."

Rey raised her hand toward Luke's lightsaber, sitting next to Snoke on the arm of his throne. She willed it into her hand—and it flew into the air, in a perfect arc that would end in her grasp.

Watching Rey struggle against him, Snoke smiled. Calling a lightsaber into one's hand was such a trivial use of the Force—a trick for the greenest apprentice, its workings almost beneath the dignity of a master of the Force. Nevertheless, he admired the girl's resolve. She was beaten but persisted.

Such hubris would have to be punished.

Snoke twisted his fingers, altering the weapon's path so that it smacked Rey in the back of the head—then spun and continued back to its place beside him.

"Such spunk," he said, feeling the hatred swelling in her and savoring it.

It was too bad, really. The girl's power could have been catalyzed by hatred and fear, forging her into a potent weapon. In another era she would have made someone a superb apprentice.

"Look here now," he said, summoning the Force to drag Rey across the room. The red curtains of the throne room parted, revealing a curved bank of viewports. Before one of them was a lens-like oculus. Forced to stare into it, Rey saw the Resistance fleet has been reduced to one warship and a collection of small transports. The smaller ships were exploding, erased one after another by the First Order's guns.

"The entire Resistance is on those transports," Snoke said. "Soon they will all be gone. For you, all is lost."

Rey turned from the window, teeth bared. Her eyes burned like fire.

Oh yes. Such power. A pity, really.

"And still that fiery spit of hope," Snoke said mockingly.

Rey's hand reached out again, fingers splayed, and Snoke could feel the Force in motion around him. This time, her target wasn't Skywalker's weapon—but Kylo Ren's.

This unexpected, desperate act caught Snoke's apprentice by surprise. His lightsaber flew off his belt and across the room, the Praetorians tensing at its flight, to land in Rey's hand.

She ignited it, the crimson blade a snarl of energy, the crossguard energy channels sputtering to life a moment later, and ran at Snoke.

The guards sprang forward, blades raised, but Snoke stopped them with a raised hand, chuckling at the sight of Rey, face bathed in the red light of the unstable blade.

"You have the spirit of a true Jedi," he told her—then used the Force to fling her across the floor. She landed hard, groaning, "and the lightsaber clattered and spun across the floor to land at Kylo's feet, spinning like a top.

"And because of that you must die," Snoke said, turning his cobalt-blue eyes to Kylo.

His apprentice had barely moved since delivering Rey, but his emotions had been simmering when he arrived, and begun to boil when Snoke revealed that he was the creator of Kylo's mysterious connection with Rey.

Or at least they had boiled until a moment ago. Then the tumult had ceased, replaced by an eerie calm and focus. Snoke had been surprised, but pleased. Master and apprentice had work ahead of them, and Kylo—that endlessly conflicted mixture of light and dark—had finally found himself.

"My worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader," Snoke said, knowing how Kylo had yearned for such praise. "Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training and fulfill your destiny.

Kylo rose, his unlit lightsaber in one hand and the other held carelessly behind his back. Step by step, he advanced on the helpless Rey. Snoke used the Force to hoist her to her knees, arms pinned back. He eyed Kylo, wary of some new retreat into sentiment, into the weakness that had held him back for so long. But Kylo's face was cold, and his eyes were determined.

"Ben!" Rey called out desperately.

Kylo stopped once Rey was within reach of his blade.

"I know what I have to do," he said, his voice emotionless.

Snoke laughed. Bridging their minds had been a gamble, one he had weighed for some time. But it had worked even better than Snoke had hoped. It had fooled the girl into revealing Skywalker, but it had also forced Kylo to confront his weaknesses. By eliminating Rey, he would also be excising the flawed, hesitant, weak half of himself.

Rey's eyes no longer burned. They were pleading. But Kylo wouldn't even look at her. Snoke could feel that his attention was focused on what he had resolved to do.

"You think he will turn, you pathetic child?" Snoke asked Rey. "I cannot be betrayed. I cannot be beaten. I see his mind. I see his every intent."

The Supreme Leader closed his eyes. This was a drama best appreciated through the Force, not the crude approximation offered by mundane senses.

"Yes!" he said. "I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it and kills his true enemy."

It was the last thing the Supreme Leader ever said.

Kylo had indeed rotated the hilt of his lightsaber so it was pointed directly at Rey's chest. But even as he did so, Luke's lightsaber was rotating silently on the armrest of Snoke's throne—unnoticed by either the Supreme Leader or the Praetorian guards.

When Kylo's fingers twitched behind his back, the blue energy blade of Luke's lightsaber sprang into existence, spearing Snoke. Then, with a flick of Kylo's hand, the blade carved through his master, cutting him in two, and flew through the air into Rey's hand as Kylo's ignited his own lightsaber.

Kylo and Rey had a moment to lock eyes. Then the crimson-armored Praetorians were blurs of motion—four sets of pairs, each pair brandishing the same variant of deadly edged weapons. It was too late to save their master, but they could at least avenge his murder.

Back-to-back, Kylo and Rey received their charge.

Snoke's Praetorian guards advanced on Kylo and Rey in silence, their faces concealed by the faceplates of their helmets.

Rey could hear a hum from their bladed weapons and realized the edges were enhanced by ultrasonic generators. And there was something else—not a sound, but a sensation she could feel as a throb in her teeth and sinuses.

That was familiar from Jakku, somehow, and after a moment she realized what it was: an intense magnetic field, probably generated by the guards' armor. If proximity to it affected Rey this way, it had to be a source of constant pain for the beings encased in that armor.

A moment later and the guards were on them, blades whirling and whining. Rey shifted her feet, raising her lightsaber to meet one guard's polearm as he tried to split open her skull. She expected the lightsaber to cleave the weapon apart, but it merely blocked the blow, and the impact sent painful vibrations shooting up her arms and into her shoulders.

Rey fell back and dodged the segmented whip of another guard. She could hear Kylo's lightsaber spitting and crackling behind her, and his grunts of effort.

The first guard aimed a slash at her knees, which she sent wide, then turned her block into an arcing slash at his face. It nicked the brim of his helmet and he stumbled away, regarding her with newfound respect. She offered him a savage grin—only to duck as she sensed another guard aiming a windmill kick at her face.

Rey fell backward, bumping into Kylo's back. Her lightsaber rose and fell, wheeling in sweeps as the guards came at her from a bewildering variety of angles.

There were too many attacks to keep track of, suddenly, and she felt her heart begin to hammer.

A guard rushed at her with a double-bladed staff and she brought her lightsaber crashing down on its middle—then nearly fell when he yanked the weapon apart, slashing at her with a blade in each hand. Rey shifted her feet to redistribute her weight, then brought her lightsaber up in a blur, knocking aside a vicious thrust from a humming voulge.

She hadn't seen the thrust coming—but the Force had warned her.

Stretch out with your feelings.

A flurry of chops from the humming lightsaber pushed back the guard with the voulge. Rey exhaled, opening her mind to the Force, and the room seemed to snap into focus.

She sensed Kylo's excitement, and his hunger—as if he were a beast finally freed to confront its tormenters.

She felt the guards' coldness, mixed with determination. Their master had been undone through treachery, and they would be the instruments of retribution.

And around all of them, she perceived the ever-shifting web of the Force.

She heard a clatter of armor as one of the guards went down behind her, felled by Kylo. Two rushed Rey at once, a whip and a vicious ax flashing. The whip locked around the blade of her lightsaber, its segments sparking and flashing, but she wrested it free and batted the ax away.

Rey reached out with her hand and shoved one guard backward with the Force, then found herself spinning in the other direction. An ax struck sparks from the floor, leaving its wielder's arms outstretched in front of her.

She brought the lightsaber down hard on the armored arms and the blade hacked through them, the vibrations in her arms vanishing as the blow interrupted the armor's mag-coils and shut off the field.

The guards backed away as the ax wielder crashed to the floor. Rey risked a look at Kylo and saw him yank a Praetorian with a whip toward him with the Force, spitting him on his lightsaber blade. The man slumped and Kylo shoved his body free with his booted foot.

Rey's arm buzzed and stung as one of the guards slashed at her with his voulge, missing her with the deadly blade but striking her with his weapon's crimson housing. Rey backed off with a yelp of pain, trying to will feeling back into her tingling fingers.

She tried to anticipate her attackers' motions, using the Force to warn her where they would be. But they were everywhere now, hot and bright in her perceptions. She just barely dodged a slash at her face, so close she could smell ozone.

It was too much—even with the Force. She was tiring, and her impressions felt like they would drown her: Sensations of life, death, light, and dark poured in on her from all directions. It was too much, a challenge bigger than what her limited training had prepared her for.

So much bigger.

Rey realized she was correct—but that she'd asked the wrong question. She couldn't direct the Force well enough to last long against three elite warriors in lightsaber-resistant armor. But she could let it direct her, allow it to make her its instrument.

One of the guards rushed at her, electro-whip crackling with energy that would shock her into unconsciousness. Rey's eyes didn't track the coiling tip of the whip, but her lightsaber was there to deflect it and sent its wielder staggering away—and then the blade interjected itself between her and the slashes of another guard's twin blades.

The Praetorian with the voulge saw his opening and charged at Rey, weapon lowered to open her belly.

The lightsaber knocked it aside and found his throat.

Two left. In her hands the lightsaber was a wheel of blue fire that sent her attackers spinning away. One guard's sudden uncertainty bloomed in the Force and Rey advanced on him, his whip connecting with air, then falling from his hand as the lightsaber found a gap between his armor's segments.

Rey was breathing hard now. The guard with two blades rushed her. She dodged, but he was faster than she thought and got behind her, his weapons seeking her throat. The lightsaber spun in her hands as she switched to a reverse grip, sending the blade through her opponent's midsection. His body sagged against her back and she shrugged him off, his armor clattering against the floor.

A strange sound reached her ears—and she felt a sudden spike of fear in the Force.

Kylo had downed another guard, but the last one had him in a headlock and was forcing the edge of his weapon closer to his throat. Rey saw Kylo's black lightsaber lying on the floor where it had been dropped. He had one hand on his enemy's weapon; the other, empty, was flailing for purchase.

"Ben!" Rey called, hurling Luke's lightsaber across the room.

Kylo raised his hand and the lightsaber smacked into it as if drawn there. Kylo looked at the ancient weapon he had sought so avidly, his eyes blazing. He ignited it, then turned it off almost as quickly. The guard behind him slumped to the floor, a smoking hole in his red helmet.

Rey and Kylo stood amid the smoke and carnage, gasping for breath, then looked at each other. Rey's eyes were filled with joy.

The deck of Snoke's throne room thrummed, and the air was lit by the glow of turbolaser fire. Rey rushed to the oculus, staring at the pinpricks of light that represented the Resistance fleet.

So few.

"The fleet!" she yelled. "Order them to stop firing! There's still time to save the fleet!"

She found Kylo standing over Snoke, Luke's lightsaber in his hand. He stared down at the body of his master. Above them, the First Order banners burned.

"Ben?" she asked. |||

"How can I face her? After all I've done? I've killed so many and torn apart the lives of many more, how can I face all those who I've wronged and get atonement? He asked eyes watering.

"You can't but I'll be there thorugh it all, if they won't accept you then they will lose me. I love you Ben, despite all that you've done to me and my friends. And I know for a fact that your mother loves you too." Rey said embracing him in a hug.

"I love you too." He said almost inaudibly before stepping back and grabbing his communicator out of his belt. But before he could say anything he and Rey were thrown to the ground as the Supremacy jolted and everything went black.


End file.
